Ms Madeleine Emerald Thiele

Research

Thesis Title: The Pre-Raphaelite Angel; An Exploration into Nineteenth Century Anglicanism and the Pre-Raphaelite Embodiment of the Angelic Body

By 1848, Victorian Society was in the middle of a major religious schism; the boundaries between Anglicanism and Catholicism were blurred, and what constituted Sacred Art became a feature of Pre-Raphaelite Art writing. My research considers the construction of the Pre-Raphaelite Angel in the 1840s - 1860s as a consequence of this social and religious instability.The construction of an Anglican Angel was in large part due to the private faiths of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and their visual engagement with quattrocento Catholic angelic conventions. By the 1870s though, artists such as Burne-Jones had metamorphosed the Pre-Raphaelite Angel into an androgynous creature, and this research charts that process of secularising and mythologising the angelic body.